What it is. Grade 8 revision has an order: structure, then paragraphs, then sentences.
Why our test works. Revising sentences inside a paragraph that should be deleted is the largest single waste of effort in student writing, and it happens because sentences are the visible layer. Naming an ORDER — argument, paragraph, sentence — makes the sequence teachable, and it is the same checkable-before-judgeable logic the strand has used since Grade 6, applied to a longer piece.
Leans on. Grades 6 and 7 separated revising from editing.
Watch for. Print it. A child revising on a screen tinkers with sentences and never reaches the structure.
Revise for language of the explanatory project. The worked example is the one you build on the board: Teacher shows the road map with today's slot named, and models revise for language on the The class reads Writing Book 8, p.69 — our own page, so a child who was absent can still get the lesson.
You open by saying where this sits — what it follows and what it is part of — in one sentence, and then you give them the reason it matters, in your own words, for about ten seconds.
Then you do one yourself, building it on the board and leaving it up: Teacher shows the road map with today's slot named, and models revise for language on the class piece — one slot only, so the model is followable. The board copy is what they look back at when they stall, so it stays there for the whole lesson.
The We-do is the main whiteboard moment of the lesson — short answers, boards up on your signal, every child visible at once. Class works the same slot on the shared piece, then reads two versions aloud and says which is clearer and why. If the answer is a whole sentence rather than a word, take it on their notebooks instead, because a sentence written on a whiteboard is written once and destroyed.
They open Writing Book 8 to page 69 and read it with you. Stop at the worked example and let them look at it.
Exit directions in full, standing still, before anyone moves. Then they work alone: In your notebook: revise for language for your own piece, double-spaced so there is room to correct.
You close on the exit direction — Read the one sentence you are most sure of. — taken from every child before anyone stands, and then the line you want them to still have tomorrow: Revise for the argument first, the sentences second.
Print it. A child revising on a screen tinkers with sentences and never reaches the structure.